Casinos and other gaming establishments often include both gaming machines, for example, slot machines providing slot games and gaming tables providing table games such as craps or roulette. As a result, many game play options are available to patrons of the gaming establishments. Interestingly, whether due to human nature, risk tolerance, economics, skills, game familiarity, etc., it has been observed that some patrons consistently prefer gaming machine play while others prefer table game play. Shrewd gaming establishment operators consequently strive to offer a proper balance between entertaining and exciting gaming machines that encourage frequent and extended play, and fast paced gaming tables offering games such as blackjack, roulette, craps, keno, baccarat, etc., where wagering amounts per game are often substantial.
Generally, the popularity of such machines with players is dependent on the likelihood (or perceived likelihood) of winning money at the machine and the intrinsic entertainment value of the machine relative to other available gaming options. Where the available gaming options include a number of competing machines and the expectation of winning at each machine is roughly the same (or believed to be the same), players are likely to be attracted to the most entertaining and exciting machines. Operators consequently strive to employ the most entertaining and exciting machines, features, and enhancements available because such machines attract frequent play and hence increase profitability to the operator. The use of video with gaming machines has significantly increased the entertainment value and thus the popularity of gaming machines.
As is known, in addition to having an electro-mechanical configuration, a gaming machine may be configured as a video gaming machine to provide video slots, video poker, video blackjack, video keno, video bingo, video pachinko, video lottery, etc., to provide a spinning reel slots game. As is also known, video gaming machines include at least one video display for displaying video game images (e.g., simulated reel symbol arrays, simulated cards, simulated numbers, etc.) and may additionally include a touch screen to allow player interaction.
Thus, to achieve the desired balance between gaming tables and these entertaining and exciting video-enhanced gaming machines, there is a need to correspondingly increase the entertainment value and popularity of gaming tables with the use of video elements.